Looks great Indian8or, excellent modelling and dynamic composition. Rendering with a higher AA setting will reduce the graininess and tidy up the jaggy edges. One thing to be aware of when using focal (depth) blurring, in real life a reflected image will also be affected by a short depth of field, so your reflected image should also be blurry. Anim8or can't replicate this, since its depth render calculations are based purely on objects and don't make use of ART attributes such as reflections. Having said that, I actually like the effect above, from an artistic or creative point of view. While not strictly emulating real life, the eye is drawn strongly to the reflected image and this works very well from a marketing or advertising viewpoint.

Question... It seems that reflections in object mode do not carry through to scene for multiple objects. Is that right? Is there any way around it? In my scene, if I wish to have the room be one object, and the character another... can I get the character to be reflected in the glass of the room object's window? As is, if the character is placed in the scene separately, it does not appear to reflect in the other object's glass.

That's an odd problem, Arik. ART reflection in Scene mode should reflect other scene elements irrespective of whether they are separate elements or not. I haven't seen this before, could it be related to lighting (eg. clear window glass still creates solid shadows in ART, there is no 'light through transparency' option)? Otherwise, maybe post a screen shot of your scene setup.

Thanks for the offer of help, Ensoniq... Seems the problem may have been a glitch as it's n ot doing it now... but here's the screenshot in scene view, as well as the latest render.

The only items in the scene are the room object, the corporal cosmic object, the camera. Also, the space scene background is visible beyond the porthole window. No special lighting or other things have been incorporated.

Now that I have the basic set in order, am going to work on modeling room details and Corporal Cosmic himself.

Ok, I know I just posted, but lighting doesn't take that long for me. I also changed the light strip to a single light to save on render time for the sake of number of lights. What's the best way to dim the lights?

DragonSlayer: Yes I like it with the light strips/pillars. Even though it's (a little bit) easier to see where one's going, at least there won't be any injuries! I feel for the person having to clean the mirrors every day...

edit: you updated while I was typing.. To tone down the lighting you can either go to Settings > Lighting and lower the Global intensity, otherwise you will have to dim every light seperately ( I can't judge how many you have in there with all the reflections haha) by giving them a darker color. Its starting to look very spacy! haha.

3D Joe; Great work! Really good! Being the perfectionist I am I have some critics you might want to look at before you make it your final - The horizon is very wavy, seeing the camera is at a pretty high angle, and the water not that rough, you could probably see pretty far over the water, That would make the horizon almost flat. Maybe making a bigger water-object would help, or incorporate the horizon in your background without having too much of a seam between object/background water.- You might want to do some work in a 2d program on the background, adding some atmospheric effects, the stars are very clear near the horizon, this wouldn't be the case with fog/haze or clouds in the air. Look at this picture for example: http://en.akella.com/Files/News/580/pt-boats%202008-08-12%2017-11-33-84.jpg , so maybe some colors fading would be all you need near the horizon, stars are usually seen more up in the sky.I'm very nitpicky I know haha, but I feel you have a great scene going on & adding this would improve on the scale of the objects etc. Good luck!

Arik: Great stuff you have going on! I like your space-themes. I feel like the green wall could use a bit of a texture, even with the cartoony look -- maybe a gradient or something would do the job. Can't wait to see your final render!

Ensoniq; Awesome work as usual! Theres nothing wrong with your paint job i think! Using a reflection with such a high saturation will always mess the colors of a reflective paint up, only remedy is to make the paint less reflective, I don't know if you want to re-render for that, but it would make the image look a little less cluttered maybe. I'm not a fan of your ground texture. I know it's hard to create something in Anim8or that looks good with lack of displacement maps. maybe modeled stones or something would do the image more justice, but I know the amount of work involved in that Great job overall! Love the colors. Cheers!

Indian8or: Marvelous image you've created! I personally would tone down on the lens flare a tad bit though, it distracts from the full image! Besides that I love the vibrant colors you have going on. The same goes here what I told Ensoniq; the floor texture seems distracting, but there is not much choice in that matter, maybe a higher resolution texture would solve it. I think you've made the final render so I won't make too many comments I love the look of your image though! Great job.

Floyd: Great to see you're participating as well. As you're about as far as I am with my image there I guess there is not much to criticize just yet! haha. Just to wish you good luck and hope you finish!

Navek: Good effort so far! I'm afraid you can't let objects not cast a shadow in Art. You will have to find a way around that I'm afraid.

Baxter: Very nice texture work you've got! If you're going to make an action shot where the ball just hit the glass, make sure to add enough motion blur for an active scene! Good luck!

Josmic8or: Great scene! I love the comic effect of the characters, they all have their own personality! I hope theyre not drowning though Not sure what kindof creatures they are, but they look like chickens... they can't swim right? uh-oh...

Thank for the feedback, Simon... I am working now on taking a more "realistic" bent to things, as I intended once done playing with the basic shapes and effects. I know I posted this in my other thread, but here is the finished "communications link" that I was developing in the earlier images here. As can be seen, it has a lot of reflection in the chrome-parts.... The design of the rest of the scene will mean adding a lot more to the imagery - pipes and conduits, etc.

Cheers $imon, appreciate the comments. The issue I have with the paint is that the reflection is too perfect, as if the bodywork was made from blue glass or something. Modern cars have a couple of clear coats over the basic coloured paint, and this under-layer is usually a bit textured, kinda like orange peel. My model already has two layers to the body, a lower coloured and specular layer and an upper clear (reflective) layer, I just can't seem to get the underlying texture right (I left it flat for the previous render) but experiments continue.

Re the ground texture, it doesn't look as good as I had hoped... I am a little underwhelmed with Anim8or's handling of bump maps in general. I will rebuild the ground texture using the texture as a displacement map and I'll see if it looks any better.

Ok, this is the final, not finished necessarily... more like abandoned! I have reworked the cracked asphalt surface as a displacement mapped terrain (via Terranim8or) and I am much happier with the paint finish.